Zebra Crossings

It’s a common weird theme to me that when we are born, we conform to whichever societies rules we fall in to.

This short scenario happened to me the other day and after thinking about it for a bit, I can’t quite get my head around the psychology of it.

Zebra crossings are put on a road to allow pedestrians to cross the road in built up areas or car parks in order to avoid the amount of time, hassle and congestion of people at the side of the road waiting for the green man if there was to be traffic lights. I found myself leaving a shop and heading towards the crossing of the road, however, instead of being in line with the 1.5 metre wide white stripes also known as a zebra crossing (for obvious reasons), I found myself a few feet to the left of these lines. Essentially, if I walked onto the road, my feet wouldn’t be touching the white lines. That being said, I was so close to the crossing that if I took two side steps, I’d be standing on the lines.

The drivers in the cars on the road could clearly see I was waiting to cross the road however would not slow down or stop to allow me to cross. A new group of people came from behind me however were a couple of steps to the left at the zebra crossing and a car stopped for them, however then continued on once they had crossed and didn’t let me cross. It some weird way, it was as if these lines of paint on the floor were a magic barrier to cars if there are people waiting at the side of them. Its such a weird concept that when it comes to driving, we follow the rules to the absolute. Because I wasn’t “abiding” by the laws of road by being a few feet away from the crossing, I was exempt from its rule to allow passengers to cross.

Why has humankind become so driven by rules and regulations? Something as small and simple as crossing the road even has a rule by which it seems if you don’t follow, something bad will happen…

Because there was no white paint on the road directly in front of me, drivers of the car thought it completely unnecessary to stop, but if I was 2-3 feet to the left, infront of the striped paint on the road, that same driver would have stopped and let me cross.